We Will Pick Up the Needles

 "Where Zen ends, asskicking begins.  And THAT is your last lesson, grasshopper." - Hyde to Jackie on today's rerun of "That 70's Show."

"Bugger,  Bugger, BUGGER!!  Shit, F***, Bugger, Bugger, Shit, F***, Bugger!"  Colin Firth as King George the VI in "The King's Speech."  Also, my opinion of cold weather.

Day 343. The low tonight is forecast to be 7 degrees F.  For some people, the "F" stand for Fahrenheit; for me it stands for Really F***-ing Cold when it follows the numeral 7.  Anyone who has ever had contact with me during the months of January and February can attest to the fact that I cease to function when the temperature dips much below 20.  It appears to be a biological phenomena.  Sort of like bears hibernating and koi floating catatonic-like at the bottom of the pond in winter.  Certain beings are not meant to move when it gets cold.  They are meant to enter a deep and sustained state of repose.  I am one of them.

Blogging has been incomprehensibly difficult over the past several days.  Reasons are varied; not the least of which includes the dinosaur may have actually snorted her last snort.  My brother has yet to perform an autopsy.  The only hopeful  prognostic indicator is, so far, no Blue Screen of Death.  Arousing myself from the bottom of the pond and braving the cold drive to the office to access a working computer may have been the singular most difficult act of keeping this commitment all year.  I want to persevere, remaining in this dark and onerous setting until I transfer all of my handwritten blogs to the screen, but Reality is leaning towards, uh, Unlikely.  Too cold.  Too tired.  Too thrilled to sit zazen on the ice-cold wood floors of my  half-century old home.  Yippee.

Speaking of wood floors (I adore a good segue), I recently spent a solid hour sweeping up the Christmas tree needles from mine.  The ritual triggered a ton of memories from my childhood.  Not necessarily pleasant memories, but memories nonetheless.  Highly diagnostic vestiges of our family dynamics. Reliable yardsticks from which to measure just how far we have come.

My father voted for an artificial Christmas tree beginning around 1964 (perhaps before, but that would precede my earliest recollections).  Mom would have none of it.  She insisted on a real tree until 1999, give or take a year.  I have undertaken the task of perpetuating the Real Tree Legacy. The custom quintessentially represents  the agony and the ecstasy.  Except that, with each passing year, I have more difficulty recalling what, exactly, comprises the ecstasy piece.

The agony is straightforward.  My father did not believe in using a vaccum to clean up the needles dropped by our Christmas Splendor.  I never knew his exact rationale; however, from the time I was four, I internalized a terror that vaccuuming Christmas tree needles would result in a catastrophic event rivaling Hiroshima. It was not to be done.  We picked them up by hand.

"We" meaning my mom and I.  After dad grumpily, grudgingly dragged the brittle, dry tree corpse to the curb on New Year's Day, (the second of precisely two contributions he made to Christmas decorating; the first being putting the damn thing in the stand), mom and I would commence with Needle Removal.  First, we would use a whisk broom and dustpan to collect the thick top layer of shed needles (this, in spite of the fact that I crawled under the tree every other night for three weeks to water it).  Next, on our hands and knees, we crouched in the cramped corner of the living room, extracting Scotch Pine remains from the gold shag carpet (speaking of the '70's show) one sticky needle at a time.  The prickly buggers were everywhere.  Strewn from the corner, across the living room floor, through the linoleum covered entry hall, across the front porch, down the steps, and trailing to the curb like rice flung at a departing bridal couple.

I don't know why my brothers were excluded from this ritual, nor why picking up needles was considered "women's work."  I do know that the origins of my obsessive-compulsive disorder may be traced to this particular task.  No needle was left unplucked.  Interesting, since nary a year went by when I didn't discover and extract at least a dozen brown, fragile needles from the Ghosts of Christmas Trees Past.  Perhaps, like glass shards deeply inbedded in an accident victim, undetected needles rose to the surface long after it was believed they had all been removed.  Inevitably, they surfaced sometime in May by painfully piercing my tender bare feet.  Bugger.  Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!

So there I was tonight, over a week late at performing the ritual, sweeping up Scotch Pine needles from my own home.  Approaching the task, perhaps for the first time, with Zen Mind.  Feeling astonished at how gratifying it can be to sweep up needles from a wood floor, especially when compared to extricating them from deep shag carpeting. Snickering at memories of the jokes my mom and I shared (all at my dad's expense) while we performed the annual needle sweep.  Curious about how obedient we were back then, and briefly forlorn at the obvious evidence of my dad's tyranny in the early years of my life.  I felt exceedingly present as I noted the dark green needles against my lovely oak floors, swept rather than hand picked, and poignantly registered the longevity of my obsessive imperative to dispose of EVERY SINGLE needle trace.  Laughed aloud at the sudden realization that, to this day, I do not use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the needles.  The machines have probably improved since 1965, but I shall take no chances.  Hiroshima was a very bad deal.

I don't think Zen has to end for asskicking to begin.  I kicked ass at needle removal tonight, and did so from right smack in the middle of Zen Mind.  Picked up those suckers from the heart of my True Nature.  Watched thoughts and memories and associations flicker in my consciousness, and float right on out.  Registered in intricate detail the physical act of cleaning up the tree remnants as well as the multiple layers of emotion the act summoned.  And tonight, instead of accompanying the task with exclamations of: "Bugger!  Shit, F***, Bugger!" - all I wanted to say was, "Thank you."  Thank you for the lives of 50 trees sacrificed to bravely display a vivid and colorful family history of ornaments.  Thank you for the privilege of living the past 18 years of my life in a home I adore.  Thank you for a  practice that converted a boring chore into a meaningful experience.  And thank you, Mom, for precious memories of picking up needles. By hand. Together.  Catastrophe averted.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc